Re: Remixing and Aggregating Task Force

`Remove` is fine if the objects in the Collection are unique.

`Add` could use some additional (!) properties like:

`before`: an ID of the item the object will be immediately before
`after`: an ID of the item the object will be immediately after
`index`: a number, an exact index in the collection

If the objects in the collection are not unique, `Remove` could also use 
these additional properties, as well as:

`relativeIndex`: the index of the item to remove from the collection 
relative to other copies of the same object; "remove the third instance 
of this note from the collection".

Evan

On 2025-06-05 8:52 p.m., emelia wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I think we'd probably need at minimum a way to signal that the 
> OrderedCollection has had its ordering updated — I don't think current 
> Add/Remove activities would be enough here. Move doesn't really offer 
> the correct semantics for reordering a collection.
>
> – Emelia
>
>> On 6 Jun 2025, at 02:29, Ryan Barrett <public@ryanb.org> wrote:
>>
>> That's a lot! Definitely a maximalist approach. To keep scope 
>> manageable, and have a prayer of concluding in any reasonable time 
>> frame, with something we have a chance of getting implementors to 
>> prioritize, I'd argue that we /not/ try to address all of that.
>>
>> Specifically, I don't think we need to or should specify how feed 
>> publishers choose the objects in their feeds, especially not in a 
>> first pass. There's successful prior art in the wild from Bluesky and 
>> others that define feeds only as ordered, pageable lists of post ids. 
>> That allows maximum flexibility for implementations to construct 
>> feeds however they want, and doesn't tie their hands, but still 
>> allows interoperability between feed publishers, consumers, and other 
>> services.
>>
>> Filtering, aggregation, moderation, algorithms, etc are all great! 
>> But I don't know that we should bake them into a feed standard. AP 
>> already has ordered collections; I can see a very manageable first 
>> pass here at just standardizing "here are my feeds, with some 
>> metadata, as ordered collections." That, we might actually have a 
>> chance of getting eg Mastodon to implement by sometime in 2026. 😁
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 5, 2025 at 2:22 PM Aaron Gray <aaronngray@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     OOh, also this pipeline design also covers moderation of streams,
>>     both automated and manual.
>>
>>     And also the algorithmic processing of streams including handling
>>     streams for younger users who may have their content filtered or
>>     limited in some way, either timewise or content wise.
>>
>>     Aaron
>>
>>     On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 at 22:19, Aaron Gray <aaronngray@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>         Evan,
>>
>>         Thank you again for the massive triage process I set in sway
>>         by my observation of unclosed issues and you embarked on
>>         handling we are now probably more than two years down the line.
>>
>>         On Thu, 5 Jun 2025 at 19:43, Evan Prodromou
>>         <evan@prodromou.name> wrote:
>>
>>             We have a few projects in the Fediverse that are doing
>>             remixing and aggregating content and other activities
>>             from other Actors. Two good examples are Surf and
>>             Channel.org.
>>
>>         This is a very interesting area that I have thought about a
>>         lot over the years. And think it really needs to be more
>>         generalized to handle and encompass all possible use cases.
>>
>>         Basically theres a pipeline of four processes, that of
>>         selecting posts from a number of feeds to a number of feeds,
>>         that of optionally filtering those posts based on criteria,
>>         that of ordering or sorting of collected posts in some form
>>         of automated or manual process in those feeds, and that of
>>         posting the resulting posts to one or a number of output feeds.
>>
>>             I think this is an interesting enough pattern that we
>>             should open up a Task Force at the SocialCG to
>>             investigate standardizing some of these features.
>>             Important questions to ask are:
>>
>>               * How should an aggregated feed appear on the
>>                 Fediverse? Is it just another Actor that Announces
>>                 activities and content that meet its requirements? Or
>>                 is there another structure?
>>
>>         Similar to, in and out boxes for continuity with the existing
>>         ActivityPub model.
>>
>>               * How do we handle ordering of feeds? Some feeds might
>>                 not be reverse chronologically ordered, but use some
>>                 other algorithmic ordering.
>>
>>         Ideally there is full control over this. And should allow for
>>         both automated and manual ordering.
>>
>>               * How can feeds be transparent about what the sources
>>                 are? Actors, search terms, hashtags, etc. What is
>>                 coming into this feed? Can consumers inspect the sources?
>>
>>         There should be full control over visibility.
>>
>>               * Is the feed replicable elsewhere?
>>
>>         This brings up the idea of relays too, yes we should allow
>>         for duplication for both redundancy and handling workloads.
>>
>>             Chairs, I'd like to propose an agenda item to discuss
>>             this possibility at the next CG meeting.
>>
>>         A meeting I would like to attend. Sorry I am not one for
>>         dealing with the pragmatic after mouth of prematurely set in
>>         stone standards, hence my absence from the process once I
>>         realized the reality of the protocol and its implications.
>>
>>             Evan
>>
>>         Aaron
>>
>>
>>         -- 
>>         Aaron Gray - @AaronNGray@fosstodon.org |
>>         @aaronngray@threads.net | @AaronNGray@Twitter.com
>>
>>         Meta-Mathematician, Independent Open Source Software
>>         Engineer, Computer Language Researcher and Designer, Type
>>         Theorist, Computer Scientist, Environmentalist and Climate
>>         Science Researcher and Disseminator.
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Aaron Gray - @AaronNGray@fosstodon.org | @aaronngray@threads.net
>>     | @AaronNGray@Twitter.com
>>
>>     Meta-Mathematician, Independent Open Source Software Engineer,
>>     Computer Language Researcher and Designer, Type Theorist,
>>     Computer Scientist, Environmentalist and Climate Science
>>     Researcher and Disseminator.
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> https://snarfed.org/
>

Received on Friday, 6 June 2025 15:04:12 UTC